


When the War Came

by yorkisms



Series: Lazer Team Playlist Fics [2]
Category: Lazer Team (2015)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Gen, Major Character Death Mentioned, Meta (sort of), No one is Happy Ever, Nobody's a fan of the suit or the warg or the antarians, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 14:39:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6859099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yorkisms/pseuds/yorkisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>And they're picking out our eyes by coal and candlelight</i><br/>When the war came, the war came hard.</p><p> </p><p>Or- death, love, and aliens come to Milford, TX.</p><p>No one's entirely happy with the result.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the War Came

**Author's Note:**

> The song that inspired this is When the War Came by The Decemberists. 
> 
> Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw_A9muYKxM 
> 
> This is my first published piece for LT, but I'm pretty proud of it! 
> 
> And shout out to my awesome motivators Val (leave-xray-alone) and Perry (mettatoning)!!

_ With all the grain of Babylon _

_ To cultivate, to make us strong _

_ And hidden here behind the walls _

_ Are shoulders wide and timber long _

_ 'Til the war came _

_ 'Til the war came _

 

Nothing brings small towns together like football. Milford is no exception, if it’s not more of a football town than it could be. 

 

That’s a broad statement. Not everyone likes the Milford High games. 

 

Some people avoid them, because it’s pretty easy not to go. But it’s hard to escape all talk of it, especially if- as small towns do- people know you used to like them. 

 

Herman Mendoza has put up with three years of well-meaning comments about how he should go to a game and see the school’s new up-and-coming star. Herman’s seen him around well enough, but a game is  _ pushing his patience. _

 

He thought that after the first year the kid would get a scholarship and move on already, but no rest for the weary. Instead, he stuck around. And the comments piled up about Zach Spencer’s supposed skill. 

 

Herman almost doesn’t go to the game. He intends to sit at home with his television and with a beer.

 

Then something inside of him- nostalgia? A slightly misguided care for the kid he’d seen fucking around at the field? Paternal instincts? Need for everyone to leave him alone?- stirs, and Herman shuts off the television. 

 

He can buy beer on the way there for afterwards, because maybe one game will give him enough comments to make everyone shut up.

 

Meanwhile, Anthony Hagan is unsatisfied (aren’t we all, Herman would snark. You aren’t special, half-ass.) 

 

He doesn’t like covering the football games. But everyone else in the Milford PD was conveniently too busy to do it, so (as in many things) he had to do everything himself. He had asked for a transfer to something else, anything, games make him feel ever so slightly guilty. (He pushes that down. It wasn’t all his fault. He’ll ignore how seeing Herman around and hearing the words  _ Half-Ass Hagan _ makes his gut twist. He’ll ignore how he misses what they had.)

 

\--Instead, his boss had laughed and said that he should suck it up, anyway. 

 

It’s hard to try and avoid games when your daughter is a cheerleader, but he does his best to most of the time. 

 

The parking lot is almost peaceful, but the stadium lurks in the night like an elephant in the room.

 

\--To both of them, the world is not perfect, but it is peaceful. 

 

Repetitive. 

 

Safe.

 

_ A terrible autonomy _

_ Is grafted onto you and me _

_ Our trust put in the government _

_ They told their lies as heaven sent _

_ 'Til the war came _

_ 'Til the war came _

 

The suit giveth and the suit taketh away. 

 

Herman, for one, is still pleased as punch that his old leg injury is fixed, or at least temporarily so- as long as they keep the suit, that is. 

 

Zach isn’t letting on, but he’s still upset and somewhat  _ afraid _ because there’s a giant laser gun attached to his arm, and while that’s badass, it’s his dominant hand. His throwing arm. That was meant to be his claim to fame, his ticket out of this town. Now it’s gone.

 

Hagan can’t see any major upsides or downsides, really, apart from his left hand being three sizes too big and being stuck with three of his- let’s say  _ less _ favorite people. Hagan likes to think himself a fair person, so he likes to imagine that they’re all good at heart. Only Woody’s given him hope.

 

Woody has a pounding headache. His stomach is feeling funny, he can’t deal with it by any means. The helmet is feeding him information at a mile a minute, which is making it hard to think about what the others are saying or doing and the whole damn situation is making him dizzy. He just wants the helmet to slow down a bit. He wonders absently if the others’ pieces still hurt.

 

Adam is bitter. It’s hard for him to hold back from breaking the faces of the three idiots whose faces he  _ can _ break. It’s not just that the suit was supposed to be his, but it’s mostly that. But also-- the thing is that millions of lives are at stake, and now they’re all dependent on four idiots from the boonies. A washed up former football player, a middle-aged cop, a douchebag jock, and the town idiot.

 

Yeah,  _ really _ faith-worthy.

 

The question for DETIA becomes- there’s a picture out there, the world knows, so what are we going to tell people about this? 

 

Should they not have a right to know?

 

Colonel Emory declares that the army will not be speaking a word on the subject. 

 

Zach Spencer is to delete his problem-causing image. 

 

It will never have existed.

 

_ And the war came with a curse and a caterwaul _

_ And the war came with all the poise of a cannonball _

_ And they're picking out our eyes by coal and candlelight _

_ When the war came, the war came hard _

 

Things change.

 

Things change literally overnight. 

 

Woody is smart- well, smart-er, and he gets the feeling it’s nowhere near done. The suit helpfully notifies him that it’s tripled his brain power, and is on it’s way to making that  _ quadrupling. _

 

Now they’re all expected to step up and be Adam, who is perfect, with the added disadvantages of a split suit and being behind on training by  _ years _ . By  _ lifetimes. _

 

Woody is aware- well, the suit is telling him- that’s impossible. Yes, they have some assets, Zach is a trained athlete, albeit an immature one. While he might not let on, Hagan is a trained cop. There’s an athletic bone in Herman’s body...somewhere. 

 

But Woody’s not sure it’s enough. Zach can’t hit a target because he won’t turn the gun down. Hagan’s reflexes leave something- actually, plenty- to be desired. Herman doesn’t listen to the rules. Woody feels emotionally towards them, that they  _ are _ a team or should at least try to be, but it’s not that. 

 

It’s that they’re in no way ready to take on an alien in five days. Less than five. The helmet is steadily feeding him a profile of the warg, and it doesn’t look very promising from earth’s point of view. 

 

Especially now that Earth’s champion doesn’t have his suit.

 

And Woody can’t cover for them forever. By the nature of their situation, he can’t carry the team like a smart kid in a group project at school. While the helmet has some power over the other pieces, he can’t make them all run. 

 

Woody just hopes that they can be convinced, or that they can feel compelled to put in the effort sometime soon.

 

For everyone’s sakes.

 

_ We made our oath to Vavilov _

_ We'd not betray the Solanum _

_ The acres of asteraceae _

_ To our own pangs of starvation _

_ When the war came _

_ When the war came _

 

\--and you know what? 

 

The books and movies always wax on about what it’s  _ like _ to be pressured with life-or-death when you’re still young, and Zach had always called bullshit, but now he’s in that situation and it’s kind of understandable. 

 

Before, there was one kind of drama. Bullshit drama. Shit he could just shrug off, water off a duck’s back. Like going to the rivals’ party after the football game and starting a fight. Like dating a new girl every few weeks but never getting past kisses and words. Like slowly falling for one girl, in a long-term for-real sorta way and being really very unsure of how to deal with that whole situation. Like getting arrested by her dad. 

 

Now there’s all of that and then there’s all this out-there shit he never could have thought up if he tried. Like having a gun fused to your throwing arm, the arm you  _ need _ . Like aliens coming to destroy the earth in- a few hours. 

 

It gets more complicated when you think about how the two interrelate.

 

Mindy’s dad has the shield. 

 

Zach needs his right arm for football, for everything.  _ Everything. _

 

If the earth gets destroyed, that would really ruin some of the plans he  _ had _ . 

 

And okay, he’s definitely older than the average young-adult literature protagonist, but it just seems kind of unfair, even if he did do something stupid. 

 

He may be nearing 20, but that in no way means he has things anywhere near figured out.

 

He has teammates of 16 who have their shit together more than he does, even before saving the world.

 

Strike the previous- it’s not just kind of unfair, it’s very unfair. 

 

And Zach hates it, and he hates that gun.

 

He’s calling her anyway. He wants to see her.

 

_ And the war came with a curse and a caterwaul _

_ And the war came with all the poise of a cannonball _

_ And they're picking out our eyes by coal and candlelight _

_ When the war came, the war came hard _

 

They don’t have time to think of what warg-possessed Mindy said, but when Woody brings up an interplanetary bracket, the words click. 

 

“It is your planet or ours, and it will be ours.”

 

It’s hard to think about in the moment, but afterwards, when DETIA is arguing over their status and they’re stuck back in that not-a-cell, everyone is quiet because they’re thinking about what they’ve been forced to do.

 

What has been done. 

 

Hundreds of planets, hundreds (of millions) of lives, possibly in the trillions as Woody can estimate. Innumerable, immeasurable cultural loss. Not to mention- Adam. It’s a grief, and not just for them, that can’t be spoken. Soldiers tend to glare as they pass. Each one wonders if they’re the only person thinking about it, noticing it.

 

But the thing is that they  _ aren’t. _ It’s hard to think that now they’ve defeated the warg they move on in the bracket. Destroy another civilization in the name of self-preservation. 

 

Stay alive. 

 

The door of their room isn’t locked anymore. They can come and go as they please.

 

Zach steps outside one night for a walk- he’s taken to them, they keep his body active and are an outlet for his jumpy mind. He zig-zags between concepts and it’s hard for him to focus, sometimes, and he needs time and space every so often. 

 

He finds Herman sneaking a cigarette. Where he keeps them- and the lighter- Zach’s not sure. 

Herman puts the lighter back in the pocket of his cargo pants and takes a drag of the cigarette.

 

“What’re you doing up, kid.”

 

“None of your business,” Zach says, somewhat defensive. 

 

“Whatever.”

 

They look at the sky together- the base is some ways from Milford, and between the town and the base there’s so little light pollution anyways.

 

Zach frowns at the celestial patterns of stars, constellations, nebulas. 

 

“D’you think we’re gonna get eaten alive up there? Y’know, fucked up the ass?”

 

Herman shrugs, blowing a smoke ring.

 

“Well. We can’t choose  _ not _ to go.”

 

_ With all the grain of Babylon... _

**Author's Note:**

> Bookmark/kudos/comment if you liked, and I do take requests via comments or on my tumblr (mttbrand-suffering)!


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